News

News from Copyright Visual Arts – CARCC

Ottawa / Montreal, February 10, 2017

Dear Copyright Visual Arts - CARCC Member

Many artists members or non members of Copyright Visual Arts will receive their T-5 Form for the copyright royalties they received in 2016 before the end of February. For most of them, royalties paid in 2016 include two Payback payments, that of February 2016 and the one we distributed last December.

CARFAC-RAAV 2017 Fee Schedule

As with every year, our reference tool is the 2017 CARFAC / RAAV Minimum Copyright and Professional Fees Schedules. It is online since the beginning of January. Several modifications have been made which should allow a better understanding of its content for users as well as for artists. In addition, some new sections have appeared in chapters A.2 - A.4 - Non-commercial reproduction rights, to diversify the types of digital use in museums and similar institutions.

It should be noted that Copyright Visual Arts - CARCC requires higher royalties for its members than the minimums listed in the RAAV-CARFAC Schedules. In other words being part of Copyrights Visual Arts may bring you higher royalties than if you administer your rights yourself, even taking into account our administration fees. Mention it to your colleagues who are not yet members, it's in their interest.

Lower administration fees for our members

Good news, as of January 2017, your copyright management society will retain only 15% on your reproduction and telecommunications royalties and 10% on the exhibition royalties it collects on your behalf. As we systematically charge more royalties for our members, even by deducting our administrative fees your royalties are generally higher than the minimums listed in the RAAV-CARFAC Schedules. Hence the advantage of maintaining your link with Copyright Visual Arts - CARCC.

Royalties paid in 2016 fell by nearly $ 1 million from the 2015 payment. This decrease is mainly due to lower royalties received from universities and the fact that Université Laval did not renew its License with Copibec.

In the short term, royalties paid to you by Copibec could fall even more drastically. Indeed, all licenses with the education sector expire in 2017 and will have to be renewed. Of course, we hope that educational institutions in Quebec will recognize that a truly equitable use includes the payment of royalties in a reasonable amount for the annual reproduction of millions of pages of protected works.

Authors (including Visual and Media Artsits) and Publishers, it is more important than ever to make your voice heard. Mobilize yourself so that royalties related to the reproduction of your works do not disappear completely. Call or write your provincial and federal MPs. Remind them of the importance of fair remuneration for the use of your work.

As for the dispute between Copibec, as representative of authors and publishers, and the Université Laval, the decision of the Quebec Court of Appeal will be rendered at the beginning of 2017 and is likely to influence the way forward. We hope that the judges responsible for this file will be able to recognize the scope of this collective action.

December 1, 2016

2016 Copyright Visual Arts-CARCC PAYBACK distribution

Dear Copyright Visual Arts-CARCC Member

Most of you are receiving these days your share of the PAYBACK distribution resulting from your reprography rights collected by Access Copyright, foreign reproduction rights collected by the SAIF (Society of the authors of the visual arts and the still image) of France, as well as various royalties collected in Canada or abroad during the year.

As you know, the 2015 distribution was delayed for most of you due to a necessary period of reorganization. This year your copyright management society is pleased to resume its practice of distributing these funds before the end of the year.

If you notice that the amounts are lower than in previous years, this is a result of the "modernization" of the Copyright Act by the Conservative government in 2012. The introduction of a new exception for "education " caused a major drop in payments made by colleges and universities to Access Copyright and Copibec. Consequently, the amounts to be distributed to authors, including those in the visual arts (yourself!) have fallen over the last 3 years.

For this same reason, your copyright management society - CARCC - has had to make a significant turnaround in its operation in 2015-2016. This reorganization was necessary to avoid a complete closure of our operations. Fortunately, we were able to react in time. Of course, these changes have resulted in some delays and slowdowns, for which we apologize.

New in the website of your copyright society

We invite you to visit the Copyright Visual Arts-CARCC website at www.carcc.ca . You will find changes in its content and in our practices. You will also find a whole new section on the basics of Copyright - Copyright 101- that we hope you will find instructive.

2017 will be a year of further changes for Copyright Visual Arts-CARCC website. In June 2017, a new transactional site will be launched, where you will be able to find all the current information and much more.

As a “scoop”, we can tell you that it will include an online registration system for new members, the creation of personal accounts for each member accessible by a personal access code, a system of licensing and secure payment and an image bank that allows our members to promote their works on the Internet in a safer environment than personal sites. In the coming months, be on the lookout, you will receive details about this new transactional site.

If our organization is to change, thanks to the new digital tools, we maintain the same vision of a personalized service committed to your needs and concerns. Follow the News section on the website which will become our main communication and management tool over time.

On behalf of the members of the Board of Directors, our team, and on our behalf, we wish you a Happy and Prosperous year 2017.

Deborah Carruthers and Paddy Lamb

Co-Chairs of Copyright Visual Arts - CARCC

June 27, 2016

FROM CARCC TO

Copyright Visual Arts – Droits d’auteur Arts visuels

Canadian Artist Representation Copyright Collective – CARCC -- was established in 1990 by CARFAC. It was founded to put into practice the principles concerning artists’ copyrights – preparing the written agreements (licenses) and the payment of appropriate royalties for the use of their art works. CARCC members – better known as affiliates – are part of a copyright collective, and affiliation means that the artist gives a mandate to CARCC for the purpose of administering their Copyright, also known as AUTHOR’S RIGHTS.

Last December, our longtime friend and colleague Janice Seline retired from CARCC. Since then, we’ve been going through a transitional period, transferring CARCC’s administrative duties between our partner in Quebec, RAAV, and our CARFAC National office in Ottawa.

Copyright Laws are not static. Following the introduction of the Copyright Modernization Act, and despite all efforts from artistic and cultural players, nothing could prevent the partial destruction of the protection of Copyright in Canada. The act to “modernize” copyright came into force in 2012 and in the following year, university and school networks – who had campaigned for its adoption – began to rely on the education exceptions to free themselves off of the obligation to pay royalties to Access Copyright. This had the direct effect of dramatically reducing CARCC’s income, threatening its very existence.

As artists do when confronted with a difficult situation, CARFAC and RAAV took advantage of this challenge and decided to dramatically renew their copyright collective society, turning it into Copyright Visual Arts – Droits d’auteur Arts visuels.

A new name and a new vision

While keeping its corporate name, CARCC will be operating under the name Copyright Visual Arts – and “en français” : Droits d’auteur Arts visuels. Under this new appellation we will be serving artists in both languages from sea to sea.

Copyright Visual Arts has also become a copyright collective society administered by a board of directors delegated by CARFAC and RAAV. The two largest associations of visual artists are now working together to ensure the provision of professional copyright administration services by their society: Copyright Visual Arts – Droits d’auteur Arts visuels

Here are its new mission and vision statements:

Copyright Visual Arts is a non profit organization providing Copyright administration for professional Canadian and Québécois visual and media artists through comprehensive access to artworks licensing and professional services.

Copyright Visual Arts responds to a shifting Art economy in the digital age by providing effective tools developed with CARFAC and RAAV to enable visual and media artists to achieve sustainable careers.

Copyright Visual Arts will facilitate broad access to the finest works by Canadian and Québecois artists through simple and effective online licensing.

Administering Authors’ Rights for the benefit of Artists

As you may know, even after the original work is sold, the copyrights remain with the artist unless specifically assigned. Assigned or not, a work may generate income through use in exhibition, reproduction, digital reproduction, in film and so on. Copyright Visual Arts helps artists to protect their copyright and benefit from it. Any time an affiliate’s works are used, Copyright Visual Arts issues a license to the party using it. The license is a written “permission to use” in order to hold an exhibition, make a reproduction, etc. The license specifies the royalties to be paid for each way in which the work will be used, which are based on the CARFAC-RAAV minimum fees schedule. Once it has received payment from the users Copyright Visual Arts remits the money to the artists.

“Fee”, a word often misused

Speaking of “fees”, it is important to understand that when we speak of “exhibition fees” or “artist’s fees” we are speaking in reality of “exhibition royalties” because the Exhibition Right is included in the Copyright Act. Most artists and users understand that a reproduction fee is a copyright royalty but many think that the exhibition fee or artist’s fee is not. Because they also cover such payments as per diem, transportation, equipment rental, etc., these non-royalties payment are then deemed to be included in the exhibition royalty paid to the artist which is not right. Additional payments made to the artist for the exhibition of their work can be added to the Exhibition copyright fee but are not included.

That is also why Copyright Visual Arts deals with the Exhibition Right. In the future, we as artists in the visual and media arts sectors, should start using the term “exhibition royalties” and our fee schedule should be called the “CARFAC-RAAV Minimum Copyright Fees Schedule”.

Daily administration

We know that this transition has caused some delays in communication, which we sincerely apologize for hoping that you understand that it takes some time to reorganize Copyright Visual Arts’ services.

The daily administration of Copyright Visual Arts is now divided between two locations. Renuka Bauri, Membership Coordinator for CARFAC National, and Samar El-Chemali from RAAV have been working closely with RAAV’s Executive Director, Christian Bédard, so that we can ensure that all our affiliates are receiving the full benefits of their membership with us. Renuka is interacting with affiliates and the users to prepare the licenses, while Samar is handling invoicing and accounting. A Coordinator overviews the administration and ensures proper relations between the society and its members, CARFAC and RAAV.

CARFAC, RAAV and Copyright Visual Arts exist for the promotion and respect of artists’ rights because paying artists for the use of their works is the best way to improve their socioeconomic conditions.

Together, we will promote Copyright Visual Arts’ services in order to interest more artists to benefit from its services.

New exciting developments are on the way for Copyright Visual Arts. We will keep you posted. Long live Copyright Visual Arts – Droits d’auteur Arts visuels